So long, Conan. See you soon.

By Michael J.W. Stickings

You know what, this has been a really good last Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien. Funny, touching, classy -- and a fitting conclusion to Conan's far-too-short run as host.

My late-night preferences are Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, but as I put it last week, Conan's a very funny, culturally and comedically relevant guy who belongs in the prime of late-night TV, not relegated to a post-Leno afterthought. He was put in an extremely difficult position by a network, NBC, that is an utter disaster, and he's done what he had to do.

And so Jay Leno heads back to The Tonight Show, where his awful, dumbed-down crap will likely pull in solid ratings again and where he'll again pale in embarrassing comparison to the vastly superior David Letterman, who remains the most potent comedic presence on late-night network TV. But Conan belongs in there, too, and I hope he succeeds.

What a captivating late-night saga this has been. (By the way, the San Francisco Chronicle's Tim Goodman, one of the finest TV critics around, has done some fabulous work addressing the whole mess at his blog The Bastard Machine. In addition to the link above, see here, here, and here.)

Good luck, Conan. See you on Fox, or wherever you end up.

**********

Here's the great opening to Conan's very first Tonight Show episode, the running across America sequence, just seven months ago:

Hysterical! ... Hitler Learns Leno Is Moving Back To Late Night

By J. Thomas Duffy

If I had watched this, while drinking my coffee, I am absolutely confident, said coffee would have come shooting out of my nose, as I fell off my chair, laughing.

This has been making the rounds, and it is off-the-charts hysterical.

Hitler Learns Leno Is Moving Back To Late Night



We've done a few posts on 'The Tonight Show' fiasco (links below), and one thing is clear, if the suits at NBC thought that trumpets would be blaring in the sky, for returning Leno back to the 11:30 slot, they should be chained to chairs, eyelids taped open, and forced to watch, endllessly, My Mother the Car;

Conan Wins the Hearts and Minds of the Internet



A Safety Valve, Dressed In Jay Leno's Timeslot

Ahhhh ... We Called It ... Leno Moving Back To 11:30

(Cross Posted at The Garlic)

Good for Conan

By Michael J.W. Stickings

For me, "late-night" television means The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, sports, the Food Network, reruns of my favourite shows (Seinfeld, The Simpsons, Family Guy), movies, and pretty much anything else that isn't on U.S. network TV. Which is to say, no Letterman (or rarely), no Conan, no Fallon, no Ferguson, and, when he was hosting The Tonight Show, absolutely no Leno, whom I consider to be unfunny, irrelevant, given all his success, a sign of American cultural and comedic degradation, if not a Sign of the Apocalypse.

I used to watch Letterman, though, and still like him, and I used to like Conan in the later slot, back when he was in New York, back when he was edgy, or free to be, back before he ended up in dead-end California with the imperative to dumb himself down and appeal like a good corporate philistine to Middle America.

Well, as you may know by now, Leno, a failure in the 10-11 slot (if with a larger audience than the late-night shows), will soon be moving back to the 11:35 slot. The plan, it seemed, was to have Leno host a half-hour show with Conan and The Tonight Show, an entertainment touchstone for decades, following him at 12:05. To be sure, Conan wasn't doing well, losing badly to Letterman, where Leno was beating him, but the move seems to have been motivated largely by poor Leno ratings, relatively speaking, leading to grumbling from NBC affiliates unhappy that their late-night news shows weren't getting enough of a bump from prime time.

And so NBC, a terrible (and, seemingly, terribly run) network, has essentially pulled the rug out from under Conan without ever really giving him the chance to succeed, to build the iconic Tonight Show franchise back to its former glory as its host. And Leno, who was a threat, and who threatened, to move to another network, was appeased with a return to his former slot.

But Conan, understandably angry, isn't having any of it:

Conan O'Brien released a statement Tuesday saying that he no longer wanted to be the host of "The Tonight Show" on NBC if it appeared at 12:05 a.m.

Mr. O'Brien's brief run as host at 11:35 p.m. is to be cut short next month, as NBC decided to restore his predecessor, Jay Leno, to that time period. Mr. O’Brien has been growing increasingly upset in recent days about how he believes he was treated by NBC’s management.

*****

In a statement Tuesday afternoon, Mr. O'Brien said, "I sincerely believe that delaying the 'Tonight Show' into the next day to accommodate another comedy program will seriously damage what I consider to be the greatest franchise in the history of broadcasting. 'The Tonight Show' at 12:05 simply isn't the 'Tonight Show.'"

He's right -- perhaps even about the significance of The Tonight Show -- and he shouldn't take such shoddy treatment from NBC, especially as it means that late-night viewers will be subjected to Leno once again.

I'm not a frequent watcher anymore, but I hope Conan moves to another network, ABC or more likely FOX, and gets back to doing what he does best regardless of when he comes on, whether it's up against Letterman and Leno or at midnight or even later. He's a funny, culturally and comedically relevant guy, and he belongs in the prime of late-night TV, not relegated to a post-Leno afterthought.

Ahhhh ... We called it ... Leno moving back to 11:30

By J. Thomas Duffy

Oh boy, did we beam a big smile when the NYT News Alert dropped in the mailbox, shouting "NBC Plan Would Move Leno to Late Nights."

Seems that there be some shakin' up goin' on at 30 Rockefeller, and as the TMZ headline says, "NBC Shakeup -- Jay Leno Comes Out on Top."

The Winter Olympics are going to kill off the 10 pm disaster that Leno helmed, and, when the network comes back, it's "Hereeeeee's Jay" at 11:30.

From Bill Carter at the NYT Media Decoder:

And while NBC officially said no final decision on the plan had been made, two senior NBC executives who had talked to the top management about the moves said that under the plan being discussed, Mr. Leno would definitely shift back to 11:35 but in a half-hour format, while Mr. O’Brien would slide back his start time by a half hour and then produce an hourlong show.

But, in an earlier post, Carter had this:

Mr. O’Brien, meanwhile, has seen his own ratings suffer. He has trailed the CBS late-night star David Letterman by about two million viewers a night. Mr. Leno had easily been the winner in that time period previously.

Me smells the Godfather/Clemenza treatment coming up for Conan:

How's Conan? ... Oh, Conan. You won't see him no more.

Linda Holmes at NPR:

Whether putting Jay Leno back at 11:30, if that's what they decide to do, is the right move or not -- that remains to be seen. It's certainly depressing, content-wise, for those of us who greatly prefer O'Brien's style to Leno's and hoped that when this all went kablooey, Jay would be the one who moved on. In any event, a couple of the network's executives are about to face a giant room full of TV critics, so they're going to wind up having to say something.

Now, The Retro Part (and, remember, from above, Conan's shrinking ratings).

A Safety Valve, Dressed In Jay Leno's Timeslot

But here's the unspoken reason NBC was so hot to do this deal:

They wanted Leno in the house, as a safety valve, should Conan O'Brien crash and burn moving from his off-beat 12:30 am time-slot to the primo 11:30 Tonight Show shrine.

Leno establishes the 10 pm time-slot, makes it workable, and then, after some major ego pampering, and dancing-on-eggshells PR, Leno bumps back to the 11:30 pm Tonight Show to pull it out of the ratings (i.e. losing money) ashes.

[snip]

This time, they're keeping Leno in the house, as a "just in case."

And don't think Conan O'Brien doesn't know it.

Jesus, he has Leno staring at him for an hour before he goes on.

Pressure? ... What pressure?

Now, if the Olympics really end up sucking ...

(Cross-posted at The Garlic.)